From: Gwynne Powell <gwynnepowell at hotmail.com>
To: Lois Bujold List <lois-bujold at lists.herald.co.uk>
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2011 9:26 AM
Subject: [LMB] Does Barrayar have a fall feast?
> From: Tel teldreaming at gmail.com> So far as modern holidays go, most countries don't have anything as
> formalized as Thanksgiving either.
From Gwynne:
> Australia Day? Most nations seem to have some national or history-based
> celebration date. Doesn't the UK have Guy Fawkes day? I've never been
> there at that time so I'm a bit cloudy on it.
I have always thought of Easter as the Australian harvest festival - Australia Day being January 26 means it's smack-bang in the middle of summer and thus not an autumnal festival, but Easter is always after the equinox, the weather's cooled down (*far* down, sometimes) and the harvests generally have started coming in. People get together for a big Easter dinner, there's lots of chocolate/feast foods, presents are often given to little ones... take away the religious connotations and it looks almost exactly like your bog-standard harvest festival to me.
Raye
raye_j at yahoo.comhttp://windtear.livejournal.comhttp://www.thejohnsens.com/index.html
I believe in dragons, unicorns, good men
and other mythical creatures.